The Sugar Trade is a large book on a major topic: the trade in sugar between Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands from 1550 to 1630, a key period in the consolidation of the Atlantic economy as it evolved from an imperial to a global network. Classic works on Brazilian sugar production and trade by Vitorino Magalhães Godinho and Frédéric Mauro covered price trends and profitability, while Stuart Schwartz and Vera Ferlini delved into local and regional sugar plantation economies. Eddy Stols, David Grant Smith, and, more recently, Leonor Freire Costa and Christopher Ebert studied the trade's organization, financing, and participants. The Sugar Trade offers a critical synthesis of existing scholarship for the period and spans the circuit of the Brazil-Portugal-Netherlands trade.